


injury prompts more like i'm in pale hell

by elliptical



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Injury, M/M, Medical, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Shoosh-Papping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i can't even write a serious summary for this it's inexcusable garbage</p>
            </blockquote>





	injury prompts more like i'm in pale hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgonApricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgonApricot/gifts).



> this is a trash fic that has no business being here but is here anyway for my trash brethren  
> mind tags
> 
> http://commanderfraya.tumblr.com/post/140173917169  
> fic inspiration comes from these prompts, several of which are scattered thru the Garbage

"Can you hear me?"

The voice comes from somewhere above you, floats down through the inky blackness you're hovering in, takes root in your chest. It surrounds you on all sides, repeating and amplifying and resonating, canyouhearme canyouhearme canyouhearmecanyouhearmecanyouhearme. For some reason, it feels very important to answer the voice, but you're a little busy being underwater.

Something sharp pokes the back of your hand.

"Can you hear me?" the voice asks again, louder now.

Your tongue's too heavy to move, and your chest hurts, because you're drowning a little bit, and how are you supposed to make noise when you're drowning?

You try to shift your tertiary vocal cords, at least, click in something other than language and hope that counts as acknowledgement. The effort makes you cough so hard you fall straight out of your body and back into the darkness, and then you forget where the body is so you can't swim back to it, and then you stop thinking altogether.

\---

You don't wake up for real for... a long time after that. Well, it's hard to tell the time, because half the time you exist and half you don't, and you can't fight your way back into your body all proper to wake up. You've figured out by now that you're supposed to wake up.

You wonder if you're dying. You might be dead. If you're dead, your spirit does not feel particularly at rest.

When you do wake up, it's with gradual sensation. Dull throbbing in your back, low beeping by your ear, warm pressure on your hand. It is a miracle that you can sort through and categorize all these things. It means your pan's back in business, and more importantly you're in the business of being present in the world, and even more importantly than that you aren't dead.

You sniff the air, curious to get input from your other senses, and you... you do not like this smell. It's sharp, chemical, a tang of metal. You know this smell, but you can't remember from where, and you make a tiny noise of distress.

The pressure on your hand intensifies and oh, now there's new aural input in addition to the machine beeping, a voice speaking low and fast and urgent. Signless. Oh! Hey! That voice belongs to Signless. You are so pleased with yourself for solving that mystery that you forget to listen to what he's saying.

You click at him, soft, like a grubling napping on their lusus. You're not sure you can manage much more than that, and besides this should be all you need to soothe him. _Hey buddy, I'm here and things are totally chill, I feel fine. Anyway when are we getting back on the road._

The warm pressure leaves your hand, but that's okay because then it's ghosting across your face, the touch of his palm and the pads of his fingers. His voice, though, is rising into something frantic, so you click at him again with slightly more irritation.

He hushes right the fuck up. Good Sign. Best moirail.

You concentrate hard. Your tongue pokes out over your lips as you form the words and hey, there's your tongue, there's your mouth.

"'m... really... hurt," you mumble.

This is something else you've figured out. You're not stupid. Usually spending prolonged periods of time outside your body and being this disoriented reentering it means something's gone badly wrong. You just can't remember _what_.

Sign talks again, but it's slower, so you can actually catch the sentences. "You're going to be okay," he says. "You're going to be okay, shh. Are you in pain?"

Your back -- you suspect your back should be in screaming agony, but you're only processing discomfort. Still, the discomfort is intense enough that you whine quietly. "Back. Hurts."

"Okay. I'll get someone to help with that."

You don't know what he does, or who he calls, but your body gets heavier and you're so tired you decide a little more napping won't hurt anyone. This is real sleep, not darkness-strewn out-of-body sleep. This is okay.

\---

Your next waking makes more sense. As in, you can feel a hell of a lot more of your body and process a lot more of the world around you. You're laying on a padded platform, and you can't tell if you're wearing clothes, but there are soft sheets pulled over you. That's all well and good, except the beeping and the chemical smell are still there.

You put together what those mean and the instincts rear up before logic can stop you. Instinct usually doesn't steer you wrong. Instinct leaves people dead before they can draw their weapons and you running from those who'd seek to hurt you and Sign and Di and Rosa all alive and well. When you're in danger instinct is better than a carefully thought out plan (no it's not, trolls are prepared for terrified instincts and thought out plans surprise them), so you open your eyes and sit up and scream.

Except you only get two out of three of those things done, because you can't sit up, because your body's too weak and pain flares up your spine when you try. Instead you keep screaming. Everything in here is white, white, whitewhitewhite sterile chemical it's over it's over they took you back and they're going to drizzle drugs into your veins and strap you down and press electrodes over your skin and murmur _measure the power levels_ \--

You try to kill the first troll who comes into the room. Straight-up clean shot fired from behind the eyes, incinerate the head, don't feel any pain, let the body fall and grab the credentials and find an escape shuttle, except that your psionics don't work. They cross the room and lean over you, so you reach up (your hands do work, you can make them work, they're not tied down, thats good) and rake your claws hard across their face.

The only thing that breaks through the haze of terror is the rust blood under the tips of your claws and the sudden, sick feeling -- _they sent the worthless in here for me to kill_ \-- but when they grab your wrist that's not enough to keep you from fighting back and screaming like they've got you pressed against a stovetop.

They're calling out, calling for backup, and you have to get out, oh god you have to get out you're running out of time, you're running out of time and you're going to be in so much trouble and you can't move you can't move you can't MOVE --

By the time Signless sprints into the room, you've moved past screaming and into hysterical keening.

He lifts your shoulders up off the platform, so you must not be so hurt you can't move. His arms wrap firmly around you, which makes new pain flare through your back, but your physical pain levels are so far from a concern right now they don't even register in this universe. Your other concerns are far too consuming, and when you reach the end of this lungful of air and take another ragged breath, you discover you're capable of language again.

\-- " _gonna HURT ME, GONNA HURT ME, GET ME OUT, GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT SIGN GET ME OUT I'M SORRY GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT_ " --

and he shooshes you frantically, his hand braced on the back of your head and pressing your face into his shoulder, his body rumbling as he purrs. He's your moirail, and you trust him with everything you have, and right now he seems more concerned with calming you down than throwing you over his shoulder and fucking the hell off whatever ship this is, which is a pretty good indicator that you should indeed try to calm down.

You draw in great heaving gasps, but the other troll leaves the room and when you're alone with him it's easier to stop choking on the panic. All you have to do is breathe through your mouth so you don't recognize the smell and not think about what's happening and where you might be and what the fuck do you think about then think about Signless think about Signless think about Signless.

Signless, who is warm and alive and safe and holding you. Signless, who got that troll to leave you alone even though you fucked up their face, Signless who has never steered you wrong in your entire life and who would never ever ever hurt you.

He keeps shushing you, wrapping the end of your cloak tightly around your torso. You hunker into it and sob against his shoulder, unable to quite stop making noise but at least not trying to kill anyone. That should count as an improvement. You're pretty sure that counts as an improvement.

"Shh," he mumbles against the shell of your ear. His body is still rumbling. "Shh, shh, no one's gonna hurt you, no one's gonna hurt you, never gonna let anyone hurt you, shh..."

Eventually you calm to the point where you're crying silently, hiccuping. He pulls the cloak tighter around you.

"It's okay, it's okay, everyone here is with the resistance. It's okay." He kisses your cheek. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I wanted to be here when you woke up so this wouldn't happen. It's okay. It's okay. Everything's going to be fine, shh, shh, you're okay, no one's gonna hurt you."

You grunt in the hopes that he won't realize you're still crying. "We've got proper medbays?"

"I am surprised about it too. Turns out we're kind of a big deal."

You hiccup one more time and catch your breath. "You promise?"

"I don't lie, Psii."

"I messed -- m-m-messed up, hurt the rustblood's face..."

"It's okay. You were disoriented. You can apologize later."

"My psionics, they won't, they're not, they won't..."

"You're on psionic suppressants."

"I want off."

"Not right now. Okay? When you're a little better. Do you remember what happened?"

\---

The short version of what happened is: You had an accident.

The long version is that you overused your psionics during a stint escaping from a gaggle of highbloods, which would not have been enough to hurt you like this on its own. You've overdone it before. The ensuing migraines are awful, but nothing a few nights of laying down with a cool cloth over your eyes won't fix.

No, the problem was that you'd been slack on your spinal port maintenance, because they require more attention than a simple rinse with water, and you can't reach, and you feel fucking awkward asking Sign to help. And you're forgetful to begin with. One of them rusted and suffered a hairline crack which, under the pressure from the psionics coursing through your body, made it buckle. Which then fucked up the direction of your powers as they fired through your nerves, and rather than exiting your eyes in towers of red and blue flame, they shorted out in your lower back and melted your bottom four ports.

(Rosa, Sign assures you, took care of the highbloods you weren't able to fell. You did good, and she finished the job. Everyone is safe.)

The medicullers had to replace the ports and fix your fucked-up-beyond-repair skin, and you are past the danger of paralysis now that your body's adjusted to the new implants and hasn't rejected them, but it's a miracle you aren't dead or worse and Sign assures you multiple times that you are an idiot.

"So when are we getting back to the routine?" you say.

"Does 'severe spinal trauma' mean nothing to you."

"Okay, but I'm fine? I'm past the danger of paralysis? Let's go?"

Sign rests his head on your shoulder. "I thought you were going to die. You fucking asshole."

"I'm sorry."

"You're going to do this again, aren't you."

"I, uh. No?"

"Psii."

"Once replaced is unnecessarily expensive and chance taking. Twice replaced is pretty much a lost cause."

"Mmm. Please don't do this again."

"Mkay. Um." You nose under his jaw. "My back really hurts. Is it okay if I sleep a little more?"

"Of course."

"Be here when I wake up?"

The corners of Sign's eyes crinkle, and he rests his forehead against yours. "Of course."


End file.
